2013 D-Bag Awards Round Two: The Fellowship of the D-Bags

• Mother Nature
• Humanity
• Congress
• Hollywood
• The Brothers Tsarnaev
• George Zimmerman
• Aaron Hernandez
• Black Friday
• Phone Companies

There are your nominees for the biggest douche bag in 2013.   Look at them.  Each one deserving of the title, but only one will walk away with the right to be called as such. 

It’s been a long year for us.  We’ve survived natural disasters and possibly being shot by George Zimmerman or Aaron Hernandez.  The Boston Marathon bombing taught us not only that we are strong as a society but severely flawed in our hatred and stupidity towards those people and things we think are different.   We elevate stupidity to lofty heights and reward companies for being douches by raking honest working people for a buck.  We’d call our congressman and tell them what’s up, but they already know what we’re talking about anyway and they’re probably on recess anyway and not going to listen.  I guess you could say it sounds just like a really bad movie involving sharks and tornadoes, but that would never get made, RIGHT?

So, looking at that list of nine entries, it’s hard to narrow down one particular contestant and say that THEY are the biggest douche bag.

Then again, maybe it isn’t that hard.  Maybe the answer is pretty easy.  Look at that list.  Everything boils down into two columns; Nature and People.  Mother Nature tore Death a new one in the last round, but it’s still nothing compared to the sheer force of hate and stupidity that is humanity.  This year, with all of the issues: same sex marriage, racism, bullying, rewarding stupid famous people, and sharing it all on the Internet, we have sunk to new lows.   We hate with more vitriol than I think we have ever done so, before.  We have gone to greater lengths to screw one another over, keep each other down, and simply just hate.   And it’s not that there isn’t a bright and shining center in all of this, but it’s so clouded over with the general blech of people being spiteful and entitled and bratty.   The entire human race needs a good spanking and for that the 2013 D-Bag Of the Year Award goes to us.

We deserve it.   Next year, let’s try harder to not be such assholes.

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Death vs. Mother Nature

Death – (2012 winner) vs Mother Nature

This is the match.  This is always the biggie for me here at M.A.M.S.  Death has won the award the most times and last year’s hands down victory was a given in that I had neither the time nor the energy to even consider counting down the biggest d-bags of the year.   Newtown and a host of other events last year drained my will to want to remember what all happened and I simply gave Death the win.  In all seriousness, he probably would have won, regardless.  So, back again for another try, he takes on the only force he can evenly be matched with, Mother Nature.

Death did not take a holiday in 2013. 

We give famous people their due on Social Media with posting that they died.  2013 was no different.  Paul Walker, Nelson Mandela, Ray Price, Peter O’Toole, Joan Fontaine, Tom Laughlin, Eleanor Parker, Frederick Sanger, Syd Field, Doris Lessing, Mike McCormack, Lou Reed, Marcia Wallace, Noel Harrison, Ed Lauter, Tom Clancy, Hiroshi Yamauchi, Ray Dolby, Sid Bernstein, Elmore Leonard, Eydie Gorme, Karen Black, Harry Byrd, Eileen Brennan, J.J. Cale, Ray Manzarek, Dennis Farina, Helen Thomas, Cory Monteith, Jim Kelly, Alan Myers, Gary David Goldberg, James Gandolfini, and Slim Whitman are just a few.  But then you just have to realize that normal, everyday, wonderful and amazing people die, like Talia Castellano, the teenager who faced down cancer and became a Cover Girl model while undergoing chemotherapy also died.  And several people died at the hands of gun violence over the past year.   Death truly is a douche bag.

But Mother Nature.. she’s a real bitch.

An earthquake and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Typhoon Phailin in India, Hurricanes Manuel and Ingrid, and tornadoes across the United States claimed the lives of over 6000 people alone this year.  And while those deaths could be chalked up in… um, Death’s column, these were due to natural disasters.  The Earth renewed its vow to kill us without even blinking and that is enough to make Mother Nature eek by with a win in this round.  

Congratulations, Mother Nature, you took down our reigning champ.  Now, don’t so much as breathe in 2014.

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Hollywood vs. Video Game Companies

Hollywood vs. Video Game Companies

2013 became a colossal year for Entertainment Industry screw ups.   Some of the most anticipated events turned out to be colossal fails and in both camps.  2013 simple became a challenge of who wanted it more, the video game industry or Hollywood.

Hollywood had a lot riding on 2013.  They went into the year still smarting from the fail that was John Carter, with a new plan.   Let’s rely on those that have brought us big wins in the past.

The Lone Ranger was supposed to be the Cowboys and Indians equivalent to audience’s love of Pirates.  After all, you have Johnny Depp playing Tonto.  The problem was that audiences were beginning to suffer from Depp-ression after Pirates 4 failed to wow them.  Yeah, it grossed over a billion worldwide but the loss of three key components to the series, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightly, and director Gore Verbinski, made for a rather anemic plot and quite frankly, continuing the series after the confusing At Worlds End was a bit of rum soaked head scratcher.    One would think it would make perfect sense to shift the action to dry land and dig up an American icon, The Lone Ranger.   But in the overly sensitive world of being, um, sensitive, folks were angered at Depp’s portrayal of Tonto, of course they were mostly white.  Native American’s fell on both sides of the fence, giving some concern over Depp’s possibly stereotypical “Injun” portrayal, but others commending him for at least attempting to speak Comanche and not seem like an Indian and more like a Comanche American.   Yet, the film failed.  Too much action, not enough Western nostalgia.  It was simply Pirates of the Old West.

Other flagrant d-bag moves by Hollywood?  How about we look at the remakes like Carrie, Evil Dead, and Oldboy?  Each one did not need to be remade.  Carrie was ridiculous, Evil Dead was Cabin in the Woods played straight, and Spike Lee whitewashing Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film just to make a buck made for a stupid moves on an industry that is already losing out to home viewing.  Case in point,  I took my kid to see Frozen over the holiday and the cost of the tickets were less than the concessions.   Granted, the prices were a bargain price during a matinee, but still, theaters don’t make any money off of the films anymore, just concessions.   Hollywood needs to start putting a better product out and stop being idiots if they want to bring people back for the prices they charge.

Not to be outdone, the video game industry had its share of moments.  Let’s see…

Microsoft reveals Xbox One and says, “YOU HAVE TO BE ONLINE TO PLAY!”  Oh, wait, they took that back.

EA launches Sim City 5 and they insist that you have to be hooked into the Internet to play it. On top of that, it crashes because they didn’t anticipate the server demand.    What part of a single player game, do they not get?  We play Sim City because we want to control the world, not share it.  That’s like giving someone a solitaire game and making it multiplayer only.

Last of Us debuts and it’s really good and frustrating and then Ellen Page gets all huffy because she thinks the main character is too much like her.  Maybe because she’s going to be in her own game called Beyond: Two Souls and doesn’t want there to be a conflict between the two when people buy it?  Who knows?    Then there’s Battlefield 4 and Devil May Cry and a slew of other idiocies that make you scratch your head.  Add in a bunch of broken consoles for PS4, the “Don’t install the GTA V disc while playing” for Xbox One, and the debate over DRM in the gaming this year and you rack up a lot of points in the win column for the gaming industry.

So who won? HOLLYWOOD!

This one is basically a tossup, but I’m going to go with Hollywood.   For all their faults, the video game industry is still heading in the right direction with things, but Hollywood has just become so out of touch with the audience that I don’t ever see them regaining their credibility.  After all, Justin Bieber had a movie open on Christmas called Believe.   That says all you need to know. 

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Miley Cyrus vs. Justin Bieber

Two girls both alike in douchebaggery.    

Miley Cyrus vs.  Justin Bieber

Biebs started had his share of incidents.  There was the Anne Frank House incident where he signed the guest book, “Would have been a belieber” in the guestbook of the Holocaust victim.  I guess because she died in a concentration camp we’ll never know.  Then there was the pissing in a bucket incident where Biebs decided to drain the Little Bieber in a mop bucket in a restaurant.  And who can forget him getting pics snapped in the bed of an “escort”.  Funny, she must have thought that being a belieber wasn’t enough and would only accept cash.

Miley had an interesting year, well, her tongue did.  After all, we saw plenty of it as well as some weird ass shit at music awards.  There was the weird bear thing and foam finger performance with Robin Thicke.  There was the fact that she licked a sledgehammer.  Lastly, she twerked Santa at the Jingle Ball.  And pretty much the fact that she was up for TIME’s Person of the Year makes you want to just say, “Enough already Hannah!”

But who is the bigger douchebag?

He came in like an undropped ball!

While Miley’s antics were merely for performance reasons and she pretty much became the biggest talked about music star this side of a blurred line, Bieber went above and beyond and pretty much disrespected a lot of people, including his fans.  He’s  little punk that thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced white bread which he fails to realize he is when he acts all gangsta.   So, for that Biebs is our winner in this heat. 

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Tsarnaev Brothers vs. Kardyeezy

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev vs. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

 

This was a hard matchup to justify.  The only common thread between them was that there was a coupling of sorts.  On one hand you the Brothers Tsarnaev, responsible for the most notable terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, when they carried out a plot to bomb the Boston Marathon in April.  On the other hand, you hand you have Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.  Their celebrity elevates them to new heights of douchebaggery.  Their whole existence as a couple and what they bring to the table in terms of being worthwhile news is pretty much what’s wrong with the country.  Kim as a role model and Kanye with his continued bouts of “I am the second coming” pretty much make we wish he had never finished.  Then again, it’s not their kid’s fault that they are like they are. 

However, are they the bigger douchebags?

The answer?

Not even close.

The Brothers Tsarnaev get that honor.  THEY KILLED PEOPLE.  Nuff said, move on North by North West!  Let’s hope that kid learns really quick to distance themselves from the ridiculousness.